Monday, October 11, 2010

Learning to make chocolate

A while back I went
down to El Salvador in Central America to visit some friends and family. At the house that I was staying at, I noticed
that they had a cacao tree growing. This
piqued my curiosity because I had never seen one before, and was interested in
knowing how chocolate was made. I went
on the internet to explore and research this information and soon came to the
conclusion that I could make it myself.
The basic gist to making it is to remove the cacao beans from the pod,
then store them in a bin to ferment the pulp, place them under the sun to dry
for several days, roast them in an oven, and then finally decide on which
method to process the beans.

This is the most
difficult step in making chocolate because chocolate companies use highly
sophisticated machines to make chocolate, chocolate liquor, cocoa powder, and
cocoa butter. Though I didn’t have
access to those sorts of machines, I did not fret because there are
alternatives to making a decent quality chocolate. Besides, the Mayans were making and drinking
chocolate hundreds of years ago using hand-made methods that are still used
today in many Latin American countries.

The easiest part of making
this chocolate was to remove the cocoa beans from the pods and drying them in
the sun. I had started drying them in
the middle of the summer when the days were hottest. What became difficult was all the hand
mashing I had to do to crush and mix the beans together. Luckily I decided to speed that process up by
using a small blender. As it was mixing,
I added sugar and milk to make it more of the familiar chocolate taste that I’m
used to. Once it was done, I placed the
mixture on a plate and put it in the refrigerator. When I took it out I was amazed at how it
felt, almost like clay.

I then wrapped it up
in aluminum paper and stored it in the freezer for several weeks. Finally this week I decided to unwrap it and
eat it. As I was opening it up, the
smell of chocolate filled the air with its aroma. The texture was similar to the chocolate part
of an M&M, or a Hershey’s Kiss but it also felt a little grainy because of
the sugar I added. Despite how it felt,
the taste was amazing. I had never tried
anything like this before. It was
natural and pure, and nothing like those artificial chocolate bars you can buy
in a store. The taste resonated in my
mouth, as I let the chocolate melt and I acknowledged that this was the best
chocolate I had ever tasted.